Inventing

Pete makes some good money as a sculptor, but decides that working with the metal was his true calling. He goes into Buy Mode by function, goes to the Entertainment sort, then the Hobbies & Skills subsort, and purchases a Scraptronic Workbench for $1250. He sticks that in the rear tower.

Now, from the workbench, one thing we need to immediately point out is the fact that Pete can purchase scrap. This of course saves bushels of time, since he can just drop a few hundred bucks for 100 pieces of scrap. If you’re a full-time sculptor, and you often work in metal, you may want to keep a workbench on hand just to quickly get scrap if you need it. It’s ultimately an expensive solution ($1250 for the workbench plus material cost), but you’re basically paying for the massive time saver. The workbench comes with some scrap already, which you can access by using the “Open” command, like it’s a refrigerator or bookshelf; then you can drag the scrap from the workbench to the Sim’s inventory.

Anyway, Pete still has over 50 pieces of scrap, not to mention what’s already in the workbench, so he doesn’t need any at the moment. He heads to the workbench and uses the “Dabble” command, which basically sees Pete messing around with things. Pete can adjust the command in the top-left corner of the screen to “Dabble Indefinitely,” or just leave it to automatically stop once he hits Level 1 of the Inventing skill. Dabbling doesn’t do anything, and in fact is dropped as a possible interaction once Pete hits Level 1; dabbling is literally just Pete randomly throwing together random scrap around to get used to the tools and so on.

Once Pete hits Level 1 in Inventing, he quits his self-employed sculptor job and switches to be a self-employed inventor. Now, unlike with sculpting, there actually is a huge benefit with being a self-employed inventor: certain opportunities (which we’ll explain soon) will open up special inventions that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get or figure out on your own.

For now, Pete doesn’t have to worry about it. He cancels the “Dabble” command, interacts with the workbench, then chooses the new “Invent” command. You won’t see it here, but the act of inventing gains skill experience in both the Inventing and Handiness skills. Pete is already at Level 10 in Handiness, which reduces the chance he’s going to wind up hurting himself as he invents. If you have a young Sim who doesn’t have any skills at all, you may need to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t electrocute himself to death in the early stages.

All inventions, when finished, automatically go into Pete’s inventory. It doesn’t take long before Pete manages to create his first invention: a “Rotational Pull.” He buys a display platform, sticks the little thing on there, and we take a picture…

It does literally nothing: it’s just a decorative object for all intents and purposes, but it’s special to Pete because it’s his first. Still, it doesn’t really help with anything at the moment. At the workbench, like with the sculpting station, Pete can now specifically make the rotational pull toy whenever he wants, but for now he just uses the conventional “Invent” command and switches it to “Invent Indefinitely.” After the day is done, Pete has a few little toys in his possession. He doesn’t want to keep any, but rather than selling things through Buy Mode, there is another way.

Pete sleeps on it. The next morning, he gets dressed, then heads over to the new consignment store (conveniently located around the corner, thanks to my placement when I installed the expansion!). Pete gets there a bit before 9am, which is a little early: the store is vacant, though Pete gets to run around in there. At around 9:30, people come in, including the store worker, Don Lothario. Pete speaks to him once he gets behind the register, and chooses the social interaction “Buy Items.”

Note that Pete is picking the “Buy Items” social interaction even though he’s selling them. When the popup box comes up, I can purchase items like any other store, but the goal here is to click the “Consign” tab. The screen switches to a list of what is in Pete’s inventory, and Pete can choose what things to sell. Of course, Pete selects to sell almost everything he’s carrying (I forgot to put a seed in the fridge before I left)…

Because the items haven’t sold yet, the money doesn’t yet get added to the family account, nor toward Pete’s job progression. Pete just heads home for now, and continues inventing. Pete’s next invention, in fact, is actually useful: he invents a tool called “The Harvester!,” including the exclamation mark, which can be used to quickly harvest crops. The Falkons don’t have a garden here, and besides, Pete is way too busy to worry about it, so he decides that he’ll consign this one too tomorrow. The best part though, just to remind you, is that because Pete has created a The Harvester!, it means he can create another one through the workbench at any time. It costs quite a bit at 25 scrap pieces, but the cost will be more than made up through the consignment store.

Now, items you consign in the consignment store are immediately placed for sale. If you play multiple families, you can switch active families here and immediately buy something that a different family puts up for sale. This means in this case that if I had another family in New Pyroville with gardeners, I could specifically have Pete make a harvester, consign it, switch to the other family, and buy it all in a fairly short amount of time. It would be a way to quickly spread inventions throughout the neighborhood to whoever needs them.

It isn’t much later when Pete gets alerted in the message center that his items sold in the consignment store. Even better, the items sold for a bit more than what they would have sold for through Buy Mode, even given the consignment fees. When you’re dealing with a mere $30 turning into $35, that doesn’t seem like much, but you need to think percentages: the consignment store will definitely lead to much bigger, better profits in the long run.

Even better, the consignment store can take all sorts of items. Remember up above, Pete could have sold his rare seed? Pretty much anything you find or create can be sold there. It’s a way of selling your paintings, stones, gems, insects, treasures from tombs, and more: if it fits in your inventory, you can probably sell it at the consignment store and make way more money that way, provided you’re patient rather than needing the money right at that moment.

Pete presently gets to Level 6 of Inventing, which brings up what is arguably the greatest object interaction in the history of the Sims franchise. Remember the stereo Pete rescued from the junkyard? As great as the stereo was, Pete decides to use it for this…

For anyone who’s ever hated anything anywhere, this is for you: meet the “Detonate This” command, which is just about as awesome as getting Batman, Michael Jordan, and IGN Editor Jessica Chobot to come to your birthday party. For a little cash, you can rig up a block of C4 to almost any object in the game and let nature take its course… provided it correctly works, which in this case, it didn’t. While you’re standing there in awe, do you mind if Pete borrows your underwear? He needs a fresh set.

Almost any object, regardless of material, can be blown the heck up. The cost of the C4 block scales to the size of the object. There is a point to this: did you notice in that screenshot up there that there were a few piles of metal on the carpet? Blowing an object up allows you to get some scrap metal, and the bigger the object is (and the more C4 it takes), the more scrap comes off it. In this case, Pete gets 9 units of scrap for just the $20 block, way cheaper than buying it directly from the workbench.

Pete makes a fairly useful invention soon, called the Floor Hygienator. This device, when placed on the floor, starts to restore the Hygiene meter of anyone who walks on it. This is very useful for gardeners, or even in your workout room. It’s a small device, just a one-tile-wide strip, so it’s best placed in a spot that must be walked on to enter or exit the room. For example, it can be placed right at a door, or in Pete’s case, right at the foot of the stairs.

Another useful invention is the Miner, seen here…

Placed right next to Pete’s car… nothing can possibly go wrong.

Pete uses the Miner for a couple hours, and eventually stops on his own when the device’s sensors go a bit batty. There’s a golden glow coming from the hole the Miner made, always a good sign. Pete uses the “Place In Inventory” command on the Miner just to get it out of the way, then “examines” the hole... by falling into it. Awesome.

According to the message center, Pete finds some underground catacombs down there, and starts to explore the place. Also, he supposedly finds some treasures… but checking both his inventory and the family inventory once he gets back, he’s got nothing. Hm… maybe I was just unlucky? It’s something to keep in mind next time we try a little adventure down the rabbit hole.

Pete’s almost-final invention only comes when he hits Level 10 in the Inventing skill. There seems to be a bit of a helper here: once you hit Level 10, if there are any inventions your Sim hasn’t found yet, there seems to be a bias where you’ll see new inventions pretty quickly. You’ll get a message when you’ve exhausted them all, and your Sim will stop automatically. Pete does so presently, and the “Invent” command is dropped from the workbench. After all, there is nothing more to invent, and the “Make…” command is really the only one that matters.

But onto some fun. Pete takes out his almost-final invention: a time machine! He places it on the roof of the rear tower, and examines it…

Pete can choose whether to go back to the past or visit the future. I flipped a coin, and… past, it is! Pete heads into the machine, and stays there for awhile. His progress is reported through the message center, similar to how he was exploring the giant gaping hole in the front yard. Eventually he comes back with a maxed out Fun meter and a four-hour debuff that stops him from time traveling again soon.

There are prizes to be had though. The next morning, Pete is recovered, and he heads to the future. After the trip… hm, no joy this time either. Maxed Fun meter, four-hour debuff, and that’s it.

It’s just as well for the Falkons. See, the real fun with the time machine is, after enough trips and with some luck (and probably modified based on whether you have the Lucky or Unlucky trait), your Sim may come home with a visitor. There are stories in other neighborhoods where a trip to the future produces a girl who claims to be the daughter of the Sim who makes the trip. This adds a Sim to the family who is literally flagged as the Sim’s daughter, though her other parent remains a basic mystery. Kinda creepy, huh?

But we’re not quite done yet: there’s one more invention that inventors can do, though it’s not blatantly listed in the skill journal. Now that Pete is up to Level 10 in Inventing, he works diligently for quite a couple weeks until he gets a phone call. He gets the start of an opportunity chain, and the name of the first step is “Master Invention.” Be sure to remember that so you can drop everything for it; you don’t want to wait another two weeks before it comes up again, do you?

The first step is to deliver a unit of palladium to the science lab. The nice thing is, you do not have to look for every single rock in the world. Take a look at this blown-up screenshot…

The diamond-looking map tags mean “This is a rock or gem you can pick up, but you don’t know what it is till you do so.” The single black rock map tag means “This is palladium, buddy! Come pick it up, hurry!!!” The black rock icon appears even if you don’t have a collection helper; I basically made this more difficult on myself by having it up and set to gems. Well, at least I found one… Pete follows my advice, grabs the palladium, and delivers it to the science lab.

That was the easy one. Next up, Pete needs to collect 10 life fruits… I guess Pete gets to play gardener after all. He runs around to collect some seeds, pretty much at random, and starts planting everything in sight. Remember that the first time you grow anything, any more seeds you find of that thing are immediately identified. So, if Pete gets a seed and it turns out not to be a life fruit seed, it’ll help narrow down the possibilities.

Life fruit seeds tend to be near one of three places: the mausoleum (ironically), the science lab, and far-flung hills on the very borders of the map. Start at the mausoleum and graveyard, and snag every seed there. If you still don’t see it, try the science lab. Only start looking further if you’ve exhausted all other possibilities, else you’ll be running around like a total moron for entirely too long.

Next up after that is to get a heart-shaped pink diamond. Again, the collection helper will GREATLY help you out here: set it to rocks and gems, then look around the city. While the process is easy, this will more than likely take you awhile: pink diamonds are very hard to come by.

There are two ways you can help the process, but both ways involve having The Sims 3: World Adventures installed. First, quite a few high-level dungeons have pink diamonds as treasures. You could also cheat and create your own dungeon, make a treasure chest, and MAKE SURE it spawns a pink diamond. For information on how to create dungeons, refer to the Building Tombs section of our The Sims 3: World Adventures part of the guide.

Second, you can visit China and buy a board breaker, then take it home and break boards like crazy until you get to space rocks. Then, you can just break space rocks for eternity and hope you spawn in a pink diamond after one successful break. At Martial Arts Level 10, you can break space rocks much faster than you would be able to run all around the city, so it might be your best bet.

If neither way appeals to you, or if you don’t have that expansion installed, one other solution is to use your Miner invention. The mere fact you’re trying to get the ultimate invention means you’ve made a Miner at some point, so you’ve probably got one around (or can make one). There is a sizeable chance you’ll find a pink diamond when you explore holes that are created. You can also try exploring the catacombs at the graveyard, but the chance of finding one there is somewhat lower.

Once you find a pink diamond, go into your inventory, and be sure to get it cut as “Heart-Shaped.” Fail that, and you basically have a very valuable paperweight. It should arrive back in the mail the day after you mail it away to get it cut.

After that comes the easiest part of this quest chain: you need to turn in 100 pieces of scrap. Unless you’re dirt poor, it should be easy enough to just buy 100 pieces from your workbench and transfer it into your inventory. Turn that back into the science lab, and get a special item called a Life Core.

With the Life Core safely in Pete’s inventory, he goes to his workbench and selects a special command called “Make Mystery Invention.” It’s going to take Pete a couple days to get it done, but there is zero chance of failure once he starts. After his work is complete, he takes a step back to admire the view…

Meet a female SimBot, which Pete names Becki! SimBots are fully controllable robots that are basically like real Sims, except with no need to have a Hygiene meter. SimBots need to eat scrap pieces now and then to stay alive, but otherwise they’re easy to take care of and live a long time. They can be interacted with fully: romance, jobs, living on their own, the whole thing. They can’t have kids, but who cares? If you’re using one as a butler, for example, they’re pretty handy to have around.

But let’s say you don’t like their traits. Becki herself has several traits, including Party Animal, that doesn’t gel with being a maid. If Becki gets wet at all—swimming, showering, playing in the sprinkler, whatever—she shorts out and shuts down. At that point, Pete can repair her or call for a repair technician, or he can use a special “Reprogram” command to reset her traits however he wishes. Also, you’ll want to quickly deal with them when they short out like this: they start “aging” very rapidly while shorted, and you don’t want to have them blown up needlessly!

Now that Pete has finished the quest to make a SimBot, he can make more anytime, provided he has the necessary ingredients. He will always need 10 Life Fruits, 1 heart-shaped pink diamond, 100 pieces of scrap, and a bar of palladium. The Life Fruits and scrap, like in the quest chain, are pretty easy to come by; Pete would have to work a bit for the others.

The alternative method to getting a SimBot is to simply drop 40,000 Lifetime Points on one: the reward is called “My Best Friend,” and it’s repeatable. Buy it, and a SimBot will be delivered after a day or two and be added to the family.

The only catch with them is that, because SimBots are basically fully controllable Sims, they are added to the family count. That means the Falkon household now has three members: still well under the eight-Sim limit, but you’ll want to keep it in mind if you have a huge family.